Any ideas where I can find mickey mouse explanations of schemes, especially workflow schemes.

Sorry for such a 'simple' question but for some reason i am just not getting the whole scheme thing around Jira... is there a place that can describe the ideas in a basic format? Not being allowed to spend money on a course its all self taught so if it doesn't sink it its a tricky to get a different explanation.

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I totally understand where you are coming from as I was in the same position a few years back. The links Vitaliy provided are really good resources.

Schemes can be difficult to get your head around here is how I have explained schemes to people I've trained:

The first thing to note is that the driving force behind any project is the Issue Type. Issue Types are what all schemes pretty much revolve around. This is why the first tab in your project the Issue Type tab. This tab will show you at a glance which issue types use which workflows, Field Configs and Screen schemes in that project.

Screens can be used across projects multiple times (see warning below)

A screen scheme is a container that determines what issue types use which of the screens you've created in any given project.

You only need a single screen scheme per project if you want all issue types to use the same screens.

However, a single project can have multiple screen schemes each with different screens for each issue type.

This can be handy when you need to have certain fields on a form for one issue type but not another. For example, you need the 'Story Points' field displayed the 'Story' Issue type but using 'Story Points' field on the 'Epic' issue type would be inappropriate.

An issue type screen scheme houses all of the screen schemes you created above, thus, providing a way for you to associate those screen schemes with your specific project.

A project may have only one Issue Type Screen Scheme however you may use the issue type screen scheme for multiple projects.

This is handy if you have multiple projects for different groups or teams but they all need to look and function the same way.

Take a look at the example below of my testing ABT project where I do all of my playing:

The ABT project has three issue types and is associated with the ABT Issue Type Screen Scheme. This issue Type screen Scheme contains two screen schemes:

The ABT Issue Type Screen Scheme associates the below to the ABT Project

The issue types Story and Subtasks use the same screen scheme consisting of the ABT Story & Subtask Create & View/Edit Screen.

Workflow & Field Config - a logical status progression of a task and the set of fields and behaviors for an issue type . A project may have one for all issue types or multiple based on issue type.

Workflow Scheme & Field Config Scheme - the container that determines which Issue types use which workflows or Field Config (like the Issue type screen scheme above) which will then be associated with a specific project. Again, only one scheme per project but the same scheme may be used across projects.

Permission & Notification Scheme - these are slightly different in that they do not have the multiple parts like the above. All you need to do here is configure a single Permission Scheme or Notification scheme and associate with your specific project. However, like the others you may use it across multiple projects.

WARNING: As stated above, you may use all of the above across multiple projects. If you decide to do this, please note: A change to one will affect each project it is associated with.

Due to the above warning, a lot of people like to use the same schemes for multiple projects to make them easy to maintain.

Personally, I like to make each project completely unique from all others using individual schemes because very few of my projects are anything alike.

Not being able to attend a course does mean that you are exposed to a lot of different approaches. Some good and some not so good.

Here in the UK you can pick up a copy of the book Practical JIRA Administration by Matthew Doar on ebay for about £12 which will give you a great introduction to the different schemes and how they all tie together. Although you need to be careful to make sure you get the one for the latest version of JIRA (7) as there are some older ones advertised which whilst the principles are still the same there are differences.

Another approach is to look at the Atlassian channel on youtube for some of the archived Atlassian University lessons. But these are far from complete course.

Hope these help and I am sure others will have many more suggestions. Not least of which is going along to your local Atlassian User Group and talking to other users. See aug.atlassian.com for details of ones near you.

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